This link has been bookmarked by 4 people . It was first bookmarked on 29 Dec 2007, by someone privately.
-
29 Dec 07
-
Google Gears
Google Gears is an installation which extends the browser to allow web applications to provide offline functionality. Such as Google Reader letting you download some posts to then continue reading them even when you’re offline (I suppose some of the younger ones among us will have to look up that word in the dictionary!). Right now, Google Gears – an open source project which Google may be hoping will gain traction in the overall market as it may be neat Trojan horse to bring more power to web apps (last not least Google’s web apps) – is still missing for such services as Gmail or Google Docs. Maybe in 2008, we’ll be seeing it rolled out to those as well?
-
This onebox prototype points to what may become one of the key conflicts in search results in 2008; results integrity vs results cross-integration. Integrity as in: showing mostly neutral results, doing things in organic ways, separating ads from real results, and so on. And cross-integration as in: showing Google-favoring special results such as tips or “promotions,” showing Google Checkout buttons on some ads, showing YouTube results in different formatting, framing pages instead of directly linking to them and so on.
-
The end result of this phenomenon? Well, progress in all the sub-optimal Google products may stagnate even as that sub-optimal Google product is able to grow its user base anyway... the drawback of monopolies.
-
There’s another noteworthy side-effect: every service hosted at *.google.com also has the power to add a security vulnerability that can impact the general Google Account, or parts thereof. And this may be the biggest risk for Google in 2008 and other years ahead: a big privacy/ security scandal. “Big” as in e.g.: “a hole exposed the emails of everyone.” (Imagine other people going through the emails of a celebrity, say, Larry Page.) This could shake the trust people have in the web apps model more than anything else; a giant win for every desktop application provider (like Microsoft) and a huge loss for every web apps provider (like Google).
-
-
-
There’s no all-knowing glass bowl in reach for our predictions for Google in 2008, but in the meantime, we have some official announcements from Google Inc, outstanding rumored products, and a couple of visible trends.
-
-
28 Dec 07
-
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.